Mullen, Nutt Took Very Different Approaches To The Egg Bowl… And Mullen’s Method Worked A Lot Better

 Send This Story To A Friend

Dan Mullen isn’t afraid of his team being tight against Ole Miss.  The idea of treating the Egg Bowl as just another game is foreign to him.  And that’s one reason he gigs UM every chance he gets — whether its saying “the school up north” or telling his team last year that they would never lose to the Rebels again.

It’s all part of Mullen’s master plan:


“The reason we do it is because we have to make sure our kid know that this game is different and our approach has to be different to this game. … Within our program, by how we refer to their school and having a (countdown) clock in our locker room and all of those things, it changes the mindset of the players when you get to this week.  They know this is not just the next game on the schedule.  This is a different game.”


Compare that to the approach of soon-to-be ex-Ole Miss coach Houston Nutt, who now admits that he “didn’t think very much about” the Egg Bowl rivalry when he arrived in Oxford.  But…


“All it takes is one loss against them.  Then you understand it much, much, much, much, much, much better.  I understand it fully.  Totally.  We understand the emphasis that needs to be placed on this game, 100 percent.”


One has to wonder if Nutt could have survived at Ole Miss if he’d gone 3-0 against MSU and not 1-2 with back-to-back losses to the mouthy Mullen.